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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when a scientist makes a town that distrusts haste lose all patience?
In Quiquendone, a small Flemish town, clean streets and tidy houses shelter lives of almost perfect calm. Burgomaster Van Tricasse and councillor Niklausse give every small decision plenty of time. Then Doctor Ox arrives with his assistant, Gedeon Ygene, and offers to light the streets at his own cost.
Ox wants more than brighter streets: he wants proof of a theory about gas and human behavior. As his experiment takes hold, quiet conversations flare into quarrels, and familiar habits give way to passion. Ygene grows uneasy, while the town's cherished peace becomes the testing ground for a scientist who keeps pushing further.
What you’ll discover
- A town in slow motion Meet people who treat haste as bad manners and make small decisions last all day.
- Science with a hidden purpose Follow Doctor Ox as his street lighting scheme becomes an experiment on his unsuspecting hosts.
- An assistant with doubts Watch Gedeon Ygene grow uneasy as the experiment moves beyond its intended bounds.
- Good manners under pressure See quiet habits buckle as conversation turns heated and calm gives way to quarrels.
- Verne's lighter side Enjoy a swift comic tale whose calm narrator makes the town's upheaval even funnier.
Who will love it
You will enjoy these tales if you like comic fantasy, ice and sea adventure, clockwork mysteries, or balloon flights, told in short, vivid stories.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Quiet governs every part of life
- The lamps conceal a human experiment
- Zacharius ties his soul to clockwork
- Pride gives the stranger an opening
- A knowledgeable passenger takes dangerous control
- A wedding becomes a rescue voyage
- The ice exposes danger within
- The mountain tests planning and nerve
- Objects carry the hopes and dangers
Who’s who
- Mayor van TricasseThe slow, cautious mayor of Quiquendone, who would like to decide nothing at all and keep the family tradition of marriage intact.
- Doctor OxA lively physiologist who offers to light a town at his own cost, because he wants a large experiment on its people.
- Master ZachariusA proud Geneva clockmaker who believes his life is tied to his watches and will do anything to keep them running.
- GérandeThe clockmaker's gentle daughter, who prays for her father and loves the apprentice Aubert.
- Jean CornbutteAn old Dunkirk sea captain who sails into the polar ice to find his missing son.
- PenellanA loyal Breton helmsman who protects Marie and watches the second mate with suspicion.
- MarieA brave young woman who stows away on the brig to search for her fiancé Louis.
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Doctor Ox's Experiment
by Jules Verne · 1872
A doctor pumps a gas into a sleepy Flemish town, and its mayor starts a war over a cow.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne.”
In short
Imagine a town so calm that two officials spend ten years deciding nothing, and a fire in the leather market is left to burn because that is the simplest cure. Then a visiting doctor doses the air with oxygen, and the same quiet people duel, brawl at the opera, and march against a neighbor over a cow.
Doctor Ox's Experiment at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 25 min3 h 30 min fast, 5 h 15 min slow
- Length
- 63,300 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1872by Jules Verne
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A town where nothing happens on purpose
Quiquendone is a small Flemish town of two thousand three hundred ninety-three people, with a carillon, a belfry, and no place on any map. Its trade is whipped cream and barley sugar. Everything here is quiet and moderate.
Mayor van Tricasse and Councilor Niklausse have debated for ten years whether the office of civil commissioner is worth keeping. A reply takes a quarter of an hour, and the mayor's pipe takes two hours to smoke. He decides that a man who dies without ever making up his mind has come very near perfection.
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Details
- First published
- 1872
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 5 h 5 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Verne, Jules. Doctor Ox's Experiment. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/doctor-oxs-experiment.
Verne, J. (2026). Doctor Ox's experiment. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/doctor-oxs-experiment (Original work published 1872)
Verne, Jules. Doctor Ox's Experiment. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/doctor-oxs-experiment.
@book{verne2026doctor,
author = {Verne, Jules},
title = {Doctor Ox's Experiment},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/doctor-oxs-experiment},
note = {First published 1872}
}
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What is Doctor Ox's Experiment about?
It is a collection of four tales by Jules Verne and a climbing account by Paul Verne. The title story tells how a doctor's new street lighting changes the calm town of Quiquendone, and the other pieces cover a clockmaker, a balloon flight, an Arctic rescue, and a climb of Mont Blanc.
Who is Doctor Ox?
Doctor Ox is a lively, secretive physiologist who arrives in Quiquendone with his assistant Gédéon Ygène. He offers to light the town at his own cost, but his real interest is an experiment on how its people behave.
What does Quiquendone represent?
Quiquendone is an invented Flemish town, absent from maps, where nobody hurries and nothing happens. Verne uses it to poke fun at slowness and caution, and to show how easily calm people can be swept up by group excitement.
The author
Jules Verne
1828–1905 · French adventure novelist
Jules Verne was a French writer born in Nantes in 1828. He lived in Paris and later in Amiens, where he died in 1905. His novels include Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).
“Gérande will not marry Aubert.”
More by Jules Verne
See all their booksMore like this
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